February 25, 2011

A lot of the time at Longwood Gardens, one is inside photographing all the amazing plants and water features. When I was there last September, I took a stroll around the building and marvelled at the architecture itself. Just beautiful. We also had a nice sky so I took the opportunity to try to capture this gorgeous architecture.

February 22, 2011

Besides being on the ocean, or next to the ocean, one of my favorite places is to be in a cozy cabin in the snow. You have probably heard that like the rest of the country, Winter continues here on the West Coast. We got several feet of new snow in the Sierra. Hooray for skiers, boarders and the ski operations!

One could say perhaps this cabin got too much of a good thing however. If this was my place and I was driving up to it, I'd be thinking about how much work I had ahead of me just to get in!

Pre-Topaz Adjust, as you'll see on the continue link, this scene was a lot more dreary. I really like how using the various sliders in Adjust I was able to brighten up the scene and bring out all the detail.

Hmm, maybe snow days are more enjoyable viewing them on our computer screens?

February 21, 2011

Found this display in a wonderful little shop some time ago. Loved the repetition and textures. In Lightroom I hit this with a preset called "B&W Filter - Yellow Filter." It mimics something you could do in the darkroom with B&W film. Yeah, I did that. 35 years ago!

February 20, 2011

I almost called today's post "Maple Extract" as that is nearly what it is. The subject is a maple tree, a Japanese Maple, to be exact. My favorite tree, yet I can rarely make a good image from one. This was shot last year at my favorite nursery, and once again I wasn't doing anything worthwhile.

These "shimmy shots" are well known in photography. Generally you either pan left to right, or up and down, on a decent scene, often trees. In this case I went low ISO and high aperture, to get the longest shutter I could, still not that long. Then I just held it down and went round and round. This was my favorite of that set.

February 19, 2011

This image was taken many years ago, on a morning much like today. We have just had several feet of snow in the Sierra, and it's darn cold here where I am as well. You can probably almost hear the crunch as I walked around, looking for my composition.